Scott D. Sagan

Scott Sagan Headshot

Scott D. Sagan, PhD

  • The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
  • The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
  • Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (voice)
(650) 723-0089 (fax)

Biography

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.

publications

Commentary
May 2013

Requiem for a Realist: Remembering the nuclear strategist

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cover link Requiem for a Realist: Remembering the nuclear strategist
Commentary
April 2011

After the Nuclear Posture Review: Obama's disarming influence

Author(s)
cover link After the Nuclear Posture Review: Obama's disarming influence
Commentary
September 2010

The Great Debate: Is Nuclear Zero the Best Option?

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cover link The Great Debate: Is Nuclear Zero the Best Option?

In The News

Nuclear Russia
Commentary

How to Keep the Ukraine Conflict From Going Nuclear

Putin’s menacing rhetoric has alarmed the West, but lessons learned 60 years ago in the Cuban Missile Crisis provide some reassurance
cover link How to Keep the Ukraine Conflict From Going Nuclear
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Commentary

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has eroded the nuclear taboo

In 1999 Nina Tannenwald, a political scientist at Brown University, wrote a paper analyzing something she had observed among generals, politicians and strategists: the “nuclear taboo”.
cover link Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has eroded the nuclear taboo